Spell Reflect in PvP
PvP March 21st, 2007No, spell reflect is not useless in pvp contrary to what you’ve probably heard, read, or experienced. I had my doubts about this ability but recently discovered its niche - and it is a very important one for warriors.
Spell reflect exists to cancel out frost nova, thus giving us an even or better chance of beating mages in 1v1 combat.
The normal dynamic in warrior vs mage was mages using frost nova and blink to keep us out of range (and mana shield to prevent us from getting rage). Nova is on a 30s cooldown, blink is on a 15s cooldown. The warrior answers to these are intercept on a 30 or 20s cooldown and a trinket on a 2 or 5 minute cooldown. It doesn’t take much to see that with these numbers, you are looking at about a 10-15 second window of being able to hit the mage before you become perma-kited.
Spell reflect is the solution, but damn is it a clumsy ability. You have to equip your shield (which you aren’t using - especially if you know you’re up against a caster), you have to have 25 rage on hand, you have to be in battle or defensive stance, and you have to wait for global cooldowns to do your trick. Talk about complicated.
It is however much simpler than it appears. When a mage frost novas you he will try to get a good distance away, without using blink (hes saving that for when you intercept). These are the precious seconds you need to get into battle stance (if you’re not already there) and get your shield on. Don’t bother trying to equip your MH weapon, just the shield. Sit in your little ice cloud and wait. Picking when to reflect is really up to you. Personally I wait to see a fireball or frostbolt about half way finished and then put up my reflect. Usually it reflects, vs a very good mage he will notice and cancel, then eat the reflect with a weak spell, and go back to his original spell. Even in this case you’ve prevented a good chunk of damage and forced him to be on his toes.
When nova breaks, immediately get your 2her back on and march over to the mage and lay down piercing howl or hamstring, and do as much as you can to either damage him or force him to blink. If he blinks intercept immediately and enjoy your victory.
Because you’re either not taking any damage while nova’d, actually dealing damage through reflect, or reducing damage by forcing him to cancel a cast, cast something else, then recast the initial spell, you’ve basically eliminated the problem of frost nova, which is taking damage while rooted. Being rooted by itself doesn’t matter if you aren’t taking damage.
So where do you get the 25 rage to reflect? Well lucky you being 35/23/3 have such talents as improved charge, second wind, and tactical mastery. You’ve also got bloodrage. If charge lands and he novas immediately, you’re pretty much set. Improved charge yields 21 rage, AM is 1 rage per 3 sec, and the nova procs your second wind bringing you up over 25. If you had to run in without charging due to long range counterspell, use bloodrage as soon as you get nova’d (and switch to battle if you aren’t there).
As I said it’s a very specific application for spell reflect, but it is also one we desperately needed in order to close the gap between ourselves and mages. Before crying about this ability, practice using it. The biggest thing is mages don’t expect it to happen, so many times you will easily reflect their main spell.
Veritas
March 21st, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Nice article. Quick fix is “TM” in the second to the last paragraph should be “AM.” You can delete this comment, just wanted to help on the proofreading front 8).
March 21st, 2007 at 11:03 pm
just found this blog, and i have to say FINALLY some constructive and correct warrior insight on the INTERWEB…
Spell reflect in theory “should” be very good against casters…but in reality it is way too clunky to be the anti caster ability that warriors have been clamoring for. However, despite it’s shortcomings it does still have it’s uses as the OP has mentioned. The key to using spell reflect well is to be able to “predict” when you’ll need to use it. Being able to swap to a shield right before the mage even casts frost nova means all the difference in the world. Now go put that Spell Reflect macro on your hotbar!
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
uhm.. you can’t reflect aoe spells right? frost nova = aoe?
No you can’t reflect nova, but you can reflect other spell while standing in nova, which successfully negate nova, l2read?
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
As an followup comment, there are really 2 problems using this trick.
1. Mages don’t always act the same. I’ve had some who don’t even cast any spells while im in nova, some who just spam ice lance, and then others who do the logical thing which is to get max distance and then cast a frostbolt/fireball.
2. Nova can break early. You come busting out of it RAWR with… an empty MH and a shield on aw crap. Although I did barehand crit a mage for 400 yesterday XD.
So it is a pretty tricky move, but it does still give us a way to break the nova/blink kiting routine. I’ve also tried using spell reflect when trying to close the gap on a mage once im slowed.
March 25th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
One good thing about spell reflect that wasn’t mentioned - it requires shield to be used, but not to reflect anything, so once you pressed the button you can switch back to 2h and you will reflect anyway (same works for Shield Wall, you can be running around with two-hander bashing things while reducing damage taken by 75%, but that doesn’t work on the arenas ;P).
November 29th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Wanted to followup on this for anyone who reads it - this trick is pretty weak nowadays. Almost every mage I see is spamming ice lance right after frost nova hits. So your nova reflect is going to do 200 dmg to him.
Vs warlock/spriest you reflect 1 dot wow.
most of the time your best case scenario with reflect is turning a polymorph/fear/cyclone, or 1 in a million, reflecting a pyroblast/chain lightning.
All in all its more of an ability to use when you’re being focused on and have your shield/def stance on anyways, because vs mages after a nova all you’ll get is an ice lance reflect most of the time.